I had no idea that having 2 at/or under 2 would be this challenging. I thought in all my great wisdom of 31 years that it would be challenging, but I had no idea. Some days go very well with minimal crying, messes & meltdowns, while actually accomplishing other tasks that make life go on day to day. But, the days in between are the hard ones. Sometimes they start out like a beautiful sunset, calm skies with no indication of the storms that are brewing. Then, the onslaught of rain streaming down our faces are the only indication to the outside world that anything has gone awry. At the end of the day when the kids are down in bed and we can relax on the couch, it's our time to recoup, regroup and heal our broken house & hearts. HaHa!
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| She's so proud of herself for helping change Lainey's diaper. |
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| Norah loves holding Lainey |
A kiss from Norah
Norah feeding Lainey some rice cereal
Lainey is almost 5 months already, and has been such a sweet and amazing little blessing to our family. She is right on target for her weight, height and all that jazz. When she got her shots at 2 months, I think she screamed bloody murder for a solid 15 minutes. Crazy how unhelpful even her Momma felt when she was losing it. She wouldn't nurse. She wouldn't even open her eyes to look at me. She just screamed. One of the hardest parts about having 2 at or under 2 is that Norah isn't quite old enough to understand that babies just cry sometimes. So when Lainey cries, Norah gets upset and then I've got two of them losing it. That rarely ever happens anymore except in the car. I try to avoid having both of them in the car for longer than 10 minutes anymore. Lainey is still in her "scream if I'm in the carseat" phase and it makes traveling awful! Hopefully I don't jinx it, but it is getting better...thank goodness!
Which makes me think about a wonderful night not too long ago that ended in many many tears for me. Part of writing down all of these fun memories for me is to be honest and candid with how I'm feeling/handling everything. So here it is...my mommy breakdown moment. It started out great. Beautiful day so we played at the park with a bunch of our friends and had lunch. Which turned into an invite for dinner. So we had dinner with some of our friends that evening and played in their backyard. All as calm as things can be with 2 under 2 but definitely nothing I couldn't handle. My stomach started hurting as we were leaving which made me in a crabby mood and made me want to have bedtime go all the quicker. But that didn't happen. Instead we had everything go wrong. Norah turned into a crab apple with her sister. Lainey would not stop crying unless I held her, which meant giving Norah a bath while listening to Lainey cry...and sometimes scream. I was trying to do everything at lightning speed, and stopped to pick Lainey up whenever I could. I laid Lainey down on Norah's giant stuffed animal dog when I got Norah a sippy cup of milk. Norah didn't like that so while I was out of the room for 30 seconds she ripped the stuffed animal out from under her almost causing her to roll over onto her face, and I'm fairly sure she bumped her head. So I fussed at Norah for hurting Lainey so now they were both crying. Things were chaotic! And stressful! Everyone was feeding off everyone's bad energy. And because I was trying to do everything so fast we were all frazzled and stressed out and just in a bad place all around. Then I did the unspeakable mommy act. I screamed at Norah to stop crying! I screamed like I was the 2 year old. Like she understood what was going on. :( Like she could do anything but cry when mommy was upset and screamed at her. :( Because I lost my cool and yelled, things just went from WORSE to HORRIBLE. After my mini breakdown I couldn't comfort either of them. I couldn't get either of them to stop screaming long enough to calm the other one down. I was in a hole and I needed a rope. So I called our wonderful neighbors to come and rescue me. Through tears Deedra understood the need and ran over to come to my rescue holding Norah and singing her favorite song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star....just long enough for me to nurse Lainey and put her down under the mobile so I could go calm Norah down even more and put her to bed....an hour and a half after her normal bedtime. Ya the bedtime that I had hoped would take 15 minutes took in excess of 2 hours. And the even harder part for me to deal with was that I broke. The calm, patient, understanding always together mommy, at least that's how I hope my girls see me, BROKE DOWN! It was an awful night. I felt like I had betrayed my little buggy. I'm still slightly beating myself up about it, but it's these kind of nights that make me have respect for all the other days when I am able to hold the fort down on my own without the tears, meltdowns and mommy breaking. Thank goodness Deedra was there to help and my friend Ashley came over to comfort me afterwards. I'm grateful for their kind words that night!
I guess I realized even more so that night than ever before, how much we need good strong relationships in our lives so we can reach out to others for help. And maybe even more humbling, but important, it is to know that we need the help. There is a reason for the saying "it takes a village to raise a child." I pride myself on being an independent person who can take care of herself and anything that comes her way. But now as a mom I pride myself on being able to ask others for help. Even if it's a sitter during the week or Memere and Pepere for a date night. We ALL need the help every now and then =)
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It's definitely the love for and from this man that helps me get through each day! He goes above and beyond to help out during the day where he can. Cooks, cleans, changes diapers, sways and puts down babies etc etc etc. I'm so lucky that I have him! So very lucky. Especially on the days when I feel so broken and run down. He is my battery recharger for sure! =) 
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